Open Circuit – “A Five-Alarm Fire for the Grid?” (Live)

Latitude Media | January 26, 2026

Episode Overview

Broadcast live from the Power Resilience Forum in Houston, this episode of Open Circuit tackles the intensifying challenges facing the U.S. electric grid after a tumultuous year marked by rising outages, price spikes, policy shifts, and mounting national security concerns. Hosts Stephen Lacy, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golan are joined by special guest Wilson Rickerson, president and co-founder of Converged Strategies, for a candid, insider discussion on what the so-called “five-alarm fire” for grid reliability means right now, how the intersecting demands of the energy transition, resilience, and defense are colliding, and what solutions are emerging (or struggling) to meet the moment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of the Grid: Are We Really at “Five Alarms”?

[05:16 – 10:28]

• The National Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)’s president, Jim Robb, recently warned of a “five-alarm fire” for U.S. grid reliability.
• Caroline Golan: The five-alarm analogy is apt for some regions (notably California and maybe Texas) but not everywhere. She underscores that “extreme weather is something we have fought with the same tools that we were fighting 20, 30 years ago. We need to change the way we fight those things.” (06:30)
• Rapidly rising loads, market dysfunctions, lagging investment in weatherization, and over-dependence on old infrastructure mean select regions are dangerously exposed.
• Crises often become catalysts: “A five-alarm fire is sometimes the only way you change. We have a history in this country of letting things break before we build the new and better system.” (07:00 – D)

2. Technological Change & Systemic Gaps

[09:34 – 12:15]

• Technology has advanced significantly since major events like Hurricane Sandy, with more sophisticated grid hardening, AI integration, and risk prediction tools.
• Yet, as Shah observes: “The investments that were made since Sandy were crude… What is new is the next generation of AI, sensors, tools—now they integrate operations. It’s about integrating and de-energizing power lines.” (08:32 – C)
• The role of flexible demand (empowering commercial and residential customers), distributed resources, and the lack of deep IT integration are highlighted as foundational bottlenecks.
• Golan: “The root cause… is that we don’t have a smart enough grid to unload all the technologies… and do so in a way which makes demonstrative impact into all those issues. What’s ironic is we are home to the five largest IT companies in the world, whose make-or-break economic transition depends on the grid working… and yet that integration hasn’t been there.” (11:27 – D)

3. Market Fragmentation and Coordination Failures

[12:52 – 16:07]

• Lack of standardization and unified thought, especially among different regional grid operators (PJM, MISO, Texas), is causing inertia.
• “There doesn’t seem to be a unified way of thinking about it… [For PJM and MISO], they don't have a unified thought process… still fighting around which ways they want to solve that problem.” (13:49 – C)
• Natural gas and electricity markets misalign on scheduling and coordination, further compounding vulnerabilities: “The electric industry works like the stock market 24/7/365. The natural gas industry works like… street betting. People write down numbers on paper.” (15:12 – C)

4. Batteries and the “Three-Headed Monster”: Load Growth, Resilience, Decarbonization

[16:47 – 20:16]

• Reconciling decarbonization, surging loads (AI/data centers), and the need for resilience is possible—if utilities and policymakers get aligned.
• Shah: “Batteries solve all three.” They are dynamic, grid-controllable, and flexible. “Batteries have telemetry built in… Once utilities agree on batteries, you can integrate other demand flexibility tech.” (17:00 – C)
• Golan remains skeptical batteries alone are enough: “There is a conflict [between these priorities]. We have to be very sober about that… The industry has relied heavily on those driving load growth to solve all grid ailments, but that’s no longer their agenda.” (18:02 – D)

5. Grid Resilience as National Security

[21:05 – 37:35]
Special Guest: Wilson Rickerson (President, Converged Strategies)

• The grid is now “the front line”—not just infrastructure, but the nervous system for war, economic stability, and civilian society.
• Cyberattacks are now standard military tools—recent U.S. actions in Venezuela highlight electricity as the battleground: “The grid is no longer just infrastructure, it’s the front line.” (23:04 – E)
• Historical lens: In WWI/II, surges in national defense demand broke the grid’s capacity; federal action was needed to stitch regions together, force coordination, and prioritize vital resources. “Ultimately, the federal government had to come in…to be able to unlock the capacity necessary to meet the defense moment.” (27:30 – C, referencing Rickerson’s report)
• Modern mission: U.S. military installations are more grid-dependent and vulnerable than ever. “Our global missions tie back to our domestic installations, and those installations are largely dependent on the grid.” (26:03 – E)

Notable Quote

“If we were called upon to fight a major war again today, I think the grid would face immediate strain already… the past is a bit of a guide to the present.”
— Wilson Rickerson, 26:03

• Interconnections, flexible demand, transmission expansion, and coordination are as essential for national defense as they are for clean energy or climate resilience.

6. Emerging Threats: Defense vs. Data Centers—A Capacity Crunch

[33:56 – 38:24]

• The data center/AI boom is straining grid supply. For the first time, defense installations can’t always get assured priority service from utilities: “That’s suddenly no longer necessarily the case…I don’t think the defense enterprise is tracking that issue.” (34:40 – E)
• There’s a fundamental question: are policies for AI/data center expansion and military reliability coming into conflict?
  • “Access to capacity for the military is also a deterrence policy. Are those two potentially at odds with each other?” (36:21 – D)
• Rickerson: “Yes, AI, the race for AI is a national security race, and there are military data centers, but large loads we don’t fully understand may box out critical defense plans.” (36:51 – E)
• Proposals for Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) and “grid-enhancing technologies” are discussed as modern-day “reserves” for emergencies, but require cultural and regulatory change at utilities.

Notable Quote:

“A VPP is basically a strategic reserve… Instead of blacking out entire communities, we leave all of this stuff in reserve so that if the Defense Department needs it or AI needs it, well, then we’re going to unlock this reserve.”
— Jigar Shah, 39:26

7. Customer Resilience & Distributed Solutions (“The New Demand”)

[44:11 – 49:11]

• Growing customer-level resilience: “15% of all US homes [now] have backup power”—from cheap portable generators to full-house batteries.
  (46:39 – C)
• Distributed batteries continue to emerge as the preferred grid-integrated solution, given regulatory hurdles for fossil-fuel backup.
• Lived experience of outages drives purchasing: “Resilience…is no longer just a theoretical black swan event. It was like Tuesday.”
  (48:24 – E)
• Massachusetts’ “vehicle to everything” pilot: growing real-world demand for grid-interactive customer resources.

8. Unlocking Capital & the Investment Imperative

[49:11 – 56:07]

• By 2030, climate resilience/adaptation could be a $1 trillion private capital opportunity. Mentions of climate resilience in corporate/investor calls surged 55% from 2021–2025. (49:37, 50:10 – B)
• Historically, 85% of investment came from public/philanthropic sources—but this is shifting as private investors enter.
• Utilities have pledged $1.1 trillion in modernization, but are defaulting to “what’s comfortable,” raising rates, and are regulatory-constrained.
• Golan: The real fix is new market and contract structures for aggregated, distributed technologies—but those are lagging behind need and possibility.
  (53:10 – D)
• Resilience investment is as much about regulation and commercial innovation as technology per se: “We actually don’t have the market structures that allow for capital to treat that transition as a long-term asset class… Until we create those, it’s going to be hard.”
  (54:40 – D)

Notable Quote

“There’s what we glorify, what we call a five-alarm fire these days happening… now like we need to start having more structured conversations.”
— Jigar Shah, 51:06

9. Final Wisdom: It’s (Still) a Communication and Coordination Problem

[56:22 – end]

• Rickerson’s parting thought: “Resilience is held back by a lot of not very good conversations being held very slowly over time. We just have to have better conversations faster.” (56:22 – E)
• Despite the complexity, there is optimism: more stakeholders are showing up, and there is growing political and market will to act.

Notable Quip:

“I’m excited to meet my 500 new best friends.”
— Wilson Rickerson, 56:44

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On the fragmented state of grid efforts:
  “There are a lot of trucks mobilized this week for Winter Storm Fern…I’m heartened by how many people have come. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen the venture capital community’s timeline and the utilities’ timeline actually converge.”
  (08:49 – C)

• On batteries as a silver bullet:
  “Batteries solve all three [problems—load, resilience, decarbonization]…they really do run like a power plant.”
  (16:47 – C)

• On private resilience spending:
  “People have already decided that this is important to them. They’re going to go out and do stuff.”
  (47:44 – C)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening recap of the energy crisis headlines: 03:02–05:16
• Are we at ‘five alarms’ right now? 05:16–09:34
• Biggest threats to grid resilience: 09:34–12:15
• Why IT/software gaps threaten resilience: 11:27
• Market fragmentation and failures: 12:52–16:07
• Load growth, resilience, and decarbonization—can we do it all? 16:47–20:16
• National security & defense overlap: 21:05–37:35
• Data centers vs. defense—capacity conflict: 33:56–38:24
• Virtual Power Plants as strategic reserve: 39:26
• Resilience shifting to customers: 44:11–49:11
• Capital shifts and new investment paradigms: 49:11–56:07
• Final thoughts: “Have better conversations—faster” 56:22

Conclusion

This episode powerfully captured the sense of urgency and complexity enveloping the U.S. grid as it faces compounding pressures from climate-driven weather, exponential data center loads, political volatility, and even international threats. The discussion pulled back the curtain on both the technical solutions (batteries, VPPs, advanced software) and the deeper system-level and cultural constraints (coordination, markets, regulatory inertia). The consensus: the grid’s five-alarm fire is everyone’s problem now—and the window for decisive, collective action is narrowing.

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